Being a small business owner, you are connected to your business in so many ways that sometimes it is impossible to separate your personal life and your business life and you invest in your business emotionally without realizing it. As a business owner, you have to sell your products or services and as you are personally intertwined with your business, it actually means that you need to sell yourself. Many small business owners feel uncomfortable because they think it is unnatural.
But you shouldn’t get nervous about it. There are ways to sell yourself by making efforts to explore new opportunities, to make new relationships, and to present yourself in a positive light. These ways eliminate any possible apprehensions about sales.
Here are proven ways to comfortably build a sales-driven mindset and do not feel like you are selling out.
Use Case Studies or Client Testimonials
Your potential clients are more likely to understand what you offer to them if they see testimonials from your happy customers. So you should compile these testimonials and offer them to prospective customers. You can display these words of praise on your web pages or you can show them to your clients on an individual basis.
These testimonials will even be more useful for your business if you present them by creating case studies that provide your clients with deeper insights on how certain products and services that you offer have helped your happy customers reach success.
Take into account that your customer testimonials don’t have to look like persuasive essay samples on different topics or formal recommendation letters. You can collect customer feedback and casual compliments and ask them to allow you to use them as they came from your customers. You can provide your customers with a standard testimonial form that they will need to complete when a project comes to an end. Besides, you record video and audio testimonials.
Welcome Any Opportunity to Help Other People
When willing to share your expertise and provide help to other people, you establish your worth and actually sell your business. You can offer help to colleagues who are dealing with challenges and promoting other businesses via social media, and sharing valuable content such as article, tips and tricks, and other valuable items for free.
Develop Your Own Professional Website
Your website is your primary promotional tool that you need to keep your business. Display facts that show past successes on your web pages in such a way that they can easily noticed by your clients. You may include customer testimonials, project case studies, and impressive examples of your past works. Besides, your websites may contain answers to frequently asked questions, detailed info about your work process, and client references.
Encourage Word of Mouth
Everyone knows how powerful word-of-the-mouth marketing really is. There is no need to be too shy when you ask your existing clients to recommend your business to the others. A good idea is to offer an incentive for the referrals and encourage your customers to recommend you. It’s very important to say thank you to people who help you made new connections.
Provide Guarantee to Your Customers
When you provide warranty or guarantee to your services, you demonstrate really strong confidence in the future of your growing business. If you are a plumber or a carpenter, for example, you may think about offering the limited time warranty and ensure that it covers the work you actually do and protect your clients from potential issues that may eventually occur with your products. You can even go further and create certain preventative service packages that can be sold to your clients.
Some businesses can also provide their customers with the money back guarantee for their services. But you should be very careful and ensure that the terms of the guarantee are clear to your clients. In this way, you will avoid any potential conflict in the future.
These simple regular activities can be very useful and help you sell your products or services effectively. You will not even need to adopt harder hitting sales techniques that can make you feel uncomfortable. If you practice doing these things, you will get used to them and will succeed in promoting your business and yourself.
